2010 has been an incredibly dynamic year for search marketers. However, it is the advancements and changes in other performance marketing channels that will prove to have the most profound and lasting impact on the search marketing industry. Display and social media advertising are moving closer to search-like pay-per-click optimization. Paid search is now just one of many performance-driven channels that live in a broader ecosystem. While this is exciting news for search marketers since they now have more channels to drive performance for their campaigns, it is also vitally important that they adapt a structure for these changes.

Maybe you've heard the news. I've got a new gig. This week, the Yellow Pages Group in Canada acquired the company I co-founded. As I said to my partner, Bill, as we walked out of the office Monday, "Today is the last day we worked for Enquiro." Although we've been ear-lobe deep in the deal for the past several months, for some reason that's when it hit us. But, as I pondered this, I realized my story is also the story of this industry.

Yesterday, All Things D posted a list of creepy comments from Eric Schmidt, making the perhaps excessively harsh comment that Schmidt "has been happily high stepping across the creepy line like the grand marshal of the Tone-Deaf Technocrat Parade." First of all, we all know how I feel about comments taken out of context. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, etc. But that perspective was referring to comments that are inherently objectionable -- calling your customers "stupid f***s" sounds bad no matter how you choose to interpret it. On the other hand, while Schmidt's comments may ...

Next week is the mid-term election. You didn't need me to tell you that, of course, because the candidates and the folks for and against ballot initiatives have been hounding you relentlessly for weeks now. And the volume is increasing here in the home stretch. The number of tweets and Facebook updates I see from everyday people crying "uncle" and "make it stop" stand in stark contrast to 2008. Back then, people were either joyfully aligning with Hope or Momma Grizzlies. A text message from Barack or Sarah produced a delighted smile at the wonder of it all. That was ...

As we enter the holiday shopping season, search marketers are anxiously planning away and anticipating strong year over year growth. For long-time sophisticated search programs, this presents an interesting conundrum: Where is this growth going to come from? While you can continuously build out keywords, this is usually going to deliver incremental volume at best. Sure, new products present greater opportunity, but only if searchers know those products exist. In this case, it's all about who they know.

I really had no idea how much I'd love my iPad. I have to say that it's now my preferred connection to the online world. Somehow, whether by design or coincidence, Apple has tapped into something primal and intuitive in myself. Judging from other iPad owners I've talked to, I suspect I'm not alone. There is a magical thing happening between me and this sleek little device. And whatever it is, it's important, even prescient. This, I suspect, is our future sitting in our laps.

There's been a lot of chatter about search and social lately, with Microsoft announcing incorporation of Facebook "likes" into the Bing search algorithm and user interface. But the more search and social converge, the more important it becomes to clarify the similarities and differences of the platforms. So, today, I'd like to separate the fact from the fiction and the feather from the flock.

I love that word, "extraordinary." My father used to say it in tones of awe and wonder, dragging out the second syllable and bathing the word itself with a kind of reverence: "ex-STRAW-dinary". His enthusiastic delivery obscured its literal meaning, that of something above or outside the ordinary, of something so special it simply does not exist in the world of the mundane.

I have recently written about how an increasing amount of early funnel search activity is moving outside the main engines to social communities, most notably the big Facebook and Twitter, as well as niche sites, mobile apps, and a mini swell of new engines. As consumers get search-savvy, they are straying from exclusivity with the main five domains (Google, Bing, Yahoo, AOL, Ask). I have also written about the changes this will bring to search marketing practices, but how much and what will change are the questions. Coming off of DMA 2010 I realize to fully comprehend that, I must ...